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Then and Now, 1925

T. S. ELIOT

We look back to a review by T. S. Eliot of English Satire and Satirists by Hugh Walker

Published: 7 March 2014

T. S. Eliot in his London Office, 1956

T
his book is the most recent addition to a series entitled “Channels of
English Literature”, each volume of which undertakes the history of a genre
in English literature from earliest times to the present. Literary history
of this type has peculiar limitations. The history of any genre
within the limits of one language is liable to be no more than a chronicle;
for the reason that the really interesting and fruitful generalizations can
hardly be drawn within such boundaries. Generalization will probably
trespass beyond the limits of language – the development of satire, for
instance, is a European, not a local affair – or outside the boundaries of
the genre in question. And there is no more difficult subject to
treat in such a scheme than the subject of satire. For it has not – as has
the drama, for instance – any definite technique. And the authors of satire
have often occupied themselves with other literary activities as well; or
like Chaucer, have not been primarily satirists at all.

If we remind ourselves of the peculiar difficulties and peculiar limitations
of the task, we must affirm that Professor Walker has succeeded. His book
has in the first place the merits of a good chronicle; it is complete,
well-proportioned and orderly. In detail it exhibits a judgment which is
sound and independent; on several authors Professor Walker is so interesting
as to make the reader regret that his subject prevents him from considering
the whole of their work. The simplest method of testing such a book is to
examine its treatment of a major and of a minor author in each of several
periods. We have found no opinion or judgment in this book which need be
called into question. On the great – Chaucer, Dryden, Pope, Byron –
Professor Walker may have said nothing very new, but he has said everything
very well. Of the small, he raises many to their proper places. To Churchill
he is just. To Dunbar, neglected even by many readers who can admire
Skelton, he awards his proper dues. He is certainly correct in emphasizing
the derivative mediocrity of Johnson’s “London”, and in insisting that
Johnson as satirist and as poet must be judged by the wonderful “Vanity of
Human Wishes”. Few persons who read this book attentively will fail to
discover some opinion of their own to be revised, or some author to be
examined whom they had previously neglected. The satirical verse of Canning,
for example, should certainly be better known:

“But French philanthropy – whose boundless mind
Glows with the general love of all mankind;
Philanthropy – beneath whose baneful sway
Each patriot passion sinks, and dies away . . .
No – through the extended globe his feelings run
As broad and general as the unbounded sun!
No narrow bigot he – his reason’d view,
Thy interests, England, ranks with thine, Peru! . . .
A steady Patriot of the World alone,
The friend of every country – but his own.”

To another class of writer also, and that the most unfortunate, Professor
Walker renders justice: to the small men who have invented or adapted a form
made perfect by the great who have eclipsed and superseded them.

The most difficult part of the task is the latter half of the nineteenth
century, where verse satire is rare, but where the mood of satire is widely
diffused. But on the most conspicuous satirical figure of the close of the
century, Samuel Butler, Dr Walker is not only sound but new; and his opinion
marks a sane reaction against the exaggerated applause which followed
complete neglect. “The Way of All Flesh” commits greater offences against literary
taste than does the often reprehended “Voyage to the Honhynyms”. For the
profession of Butler’s prodigious novel is realism, and realism collapses if
there is the slightest suspicion of prejudice or petulance. And Dr Walker
shows that Butler sometimes loaded his dice. Swift employed the form of
extravaganza which allows much greater artistic licence to the passions. And
Swift, after all – though this is a purely biographical defence – was
fulfilling that destiny of his nature which slowly and inevitably led to
madness; but there is no such extenuation for pure crankiness and
eccentricity. Satire, Dr Walker sadly admits, is “a relatively low form of
literature”; but in Swift perhaps it rose as near to the highest as it ever
has risen, or ever is likely to rise.